Waxahatchee- American Weekend

Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder where the "why did you hurt me?” paradigm of lady-fronted pop music came from. The blues is an obvious answer. However, when I actually listen to older lyrics like Bessie Smith and Elizabeth Cotten, they're talking about how they feel instead of analyzing dudes. Analyzing someone else loses some of the power that comes from the singer expressing their own feelings. My unfounded conspiracy theory is that the whole “why did you hurt me (was it yr dad)?” trend was a weird marketing ploy perpetrated by Phil Spector in the sixties, but I really don’t know. Anyway, I’m always grateful to hear introspective tracks that play around with the concept and start telling a different story.

                                                                                                                                                          

Waxahatchee is Katie Crutchfield of P.S. Eliot and Bad Banana's solo project, and American Weekend is her first full-length release following a 2011 split with Chris Clavin. The acoustic tracks contain short and simple melodies reminiscent of a Guided by Voices’ jingle, and the lyrics are like tiny devastating short stories. Despite the haunting, melancholy tone, American Weekend conveys a kind of bravado and even humor that puts it outside most 90’s hand-holding pop activity.

 Everything sounds slightly underwater.

"bathtub"

 Always from a first-person perspective, each song sounds masochistic and sad and desperate, which ironically or not is why I find American Weekend a “feminist album.” Crushers like “catfish” and “rose, 1956” insist on irredeemable loss. “rose 1956” could easily be about a grandmother’s life: “now i hide out from telephone wires at waxahatchee creek/ your body, weak from smoke and tar and subsequent disease/ you got married when you were 15.”

These tracks remind me of the private, inward anger that I associate with my American Weekend generation, and the weird integrity of refusing to be any less sad. Only slightly less underwater than "bathtub," “catfish” is by far my favorite track. The melody is so repetitive and the lyrics are so careful and precise that it makes me think of very barely contained anger: “we stick to our slow motion memory/its 1 in the morning and 90 degrees/and though now it is hovering darkly over me/it'll look just like heaven when i get up and leave/you're a ghost and i can't breathe.” 


[Anyone who wants to talk about feminist mourning, catfish, Phil Spector or mood music, feel free to get in touch].

-Rachel

Waxahatchee is on tour at this very moment, and you can find American Weekend here from Don Giovanni.